On Monday, the two biggest conservative parties the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives cemented a merger of desperation.
In the last election, in 2000, the Alliance won 25.5% of the vote, double that of the Progressive Conservatives.
It has suffered several defections, especially among the Progressive Conservatives in eastern Canada.
The Alliance represents an effort to broaden the political base of the western Reform party by wooing eastern Progressive Conservatives.
At the last national election, in 1997, Reform displaced the more centrist Progressive Conservatives as Canada's main opposition, winning 80 seats.
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Despite his inexperience, he showed skill in piloting a recent merger of two rival right-of-centre parties, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives.
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Rather than a merger of equals, it still looks to some Canadians like a takeover of the moderate Progressive Conservatives by the western-based Alliance.
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The Alliance is a bold effort to reshape Canada's right by merging Reform, a federal neo-conservative party of Albertan origin, with sections of the Progressive Conservatives.
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The debate will be painful, as neoconservatives, paleo-conservatives, progressive conservatives, moderates and libertarians battle it out to chart the course for a new and more vibrant party.
Its long-term future depends on unity with the Progressive Conservatives.
He leads a party that emerged only in March from a hurried merger between the western-based, socially conservative Alliance (previously the Reform Party) and the eastern rump of the more centrist Progressive Conservatives.
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Across the political spectrum, from progressive liberals to Tea Party conservatives, all groups contributed to its broad coalition of support.
The danger now is that with the progressive big government policies discredited, conservatives will embrace the growth deficit, instead of growth policies, out of their ambition to defeat President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
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His Conservatives are further to the right than the former Progressive Conservative Party, which governed Canada on and off until its annihilation in 1993 and which was barely distinguishable from the Liberals.
The standards committee's inquiry will drag on for several weeks, giving the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives plenty of chances to assert that New Labour, far from bringing progressive politics into Scotland, is aping the worst habits of Westminster.
Both conservatives looking to pare back entitlement spending and liberals hoping to make the tax system more progressive should be willing to sign onto reforms that flip this equation.
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